Re: The conceptual change process (long)

["Bob Sciamanda" <trebor@velocity.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com>
To: PHYS-L <phys-l@atlantis.uwf.edu>
Date: Sunday, February 15, 1998 1:58 PM
Subject: The conceptual change process (long)


> On Sat, 14 Feb 1998, Bob Sciamanda wrote:
>
> > I'm sorry, but I really think this objection is silly.  In almost 40
years
> > of teaching physics I have never known this phraseology to be
> > mis-interpreted, nor did any danger of this happening ever even occur to
me
> > until I first saw it exposed on this list.  A language which can
peaceably
> > live with "lb." as the abbreviation for "pound" has long since learned
that
> > there are more serious battles to wage than the proper choice of a
harmless
> > sound.
>
> I'm an electrical engineer.  As a physics stuent, I was your customer.
> Please regard my stuff about "capacitors store charge" as being the
> complaints of an angry customer.
> . . .
> . . .Electronics texts don't say much about what really happens, they
follow the
>  lead of physics texts and teach that CAPACITORS STORE CHARGE, but
>  without  adding any other details.
>
> William J. Beaty                                  SCIENCE HOBBYIST website

Bill,
Had you been my student, you would have examined the details.  You were
taught (or at least learned) words, not physical phenomena.  I sympathize
with your indictment of poor teaching; I just think that the problem is not
in (or cured by changing) the words, it is in the ideas.  Don't rely on
words (or mathematics) alone to convey or express the physics; they must be
chewed, ruminated, digested, purged of waste materials, and only then
assimilated into our being.  Whatever word choices we make, they too are
faltering, incomplete (linguistic) models for ideas (which themselves are
models of reality).

Can a piece of amber store charge?  Can two objects store equal and opposite
charges?  A capacitor is a thing;  in the most common use of the word it is
a system of two conductors, electrically insulated from each other.  Many
things can be done to/with this thing;  the two conductors can each be
electrically charged in a wide variety of ways.  Such a physical discussion
should be engaged (and played with in electrostatic experimentation - real
and/or gedanken) long before the concept of "capacitance" as a definable
property of a properly designed system subjected to a definite procedure is
created.

I agree with your complaints (I had some terrible teachers, too).   But my
biggest complaints are with semantic arguments over non-problems and with
semantic cures for real problems.

-Bob

Bob Sciamanda   sciamanda@edinboro.edu
Dept of Physics   trebor@velocity.net
Edinboro Univ of PA  http://www.edinboro.edu/~sciamanda/home.html
Edinboro, PA   (814)838-7185